Kallah Celebrates Wedding After Surviving Bus Accident

Sari Sperling, the kallah whose arm and leg were critically injured ten months ago after a 420 Egged Yerushalayim/Bnei Brak bus plowed into a truck, causing the death of six victims, recently concluded sheva brachos after celebrating her marriage to Kobi Kastelewitz with thousands of guests at the wedding in Yerushalayim’s Binyanei Umah convention hall.

The kallah said that she felt Hashem’s chesed with her all the time. Of all the people on her side of the bus, she was the only survivor, she recalled. The tefillos and mitzvos of Klal Yisroel helped pull her through the crisis.

“There was tremendous emotion,” the kallah’s sister-in-law, Riki Hofstadter, said of the wedding. “We all wept with emotion and I am certain that everyone present found it difficult to contain themselves. The doctors who dealt with her and operated on her came and couldn’t believe their eyes. Last year they said that if she recovered she would probably lose her hand and leg, but at the wedding she proved to everyone that although her right hand is not functioning, she was a walking miracle, walking and dancing.”

“At the chupah, because of the huge crowd, the kallah didn’t feel well,” Hofstadter added. “It was very stressful. In the end, with superhuman powers, the chosson and the kallah who had both been hurt danced and rejoiced with the whole crowd that arrived. An especially emotional moment at the wedding was when everyone sang Nishmas in a publicizing of the miracle.”

The bus driver, Chaim Biton, agreed to a plea deal and was convicted to four years’ imprisonment for six counts of involuntary manslaughter, negligent driving, driving at an unreasonable speed, failure to slow or stop, driving off the road, and reckless and negligent acts.

“Chaim Biton confessed that he did not notice the truck standing at the road margin, did not slow his speed, swerved onto the road margin and collided with a truck,” said Yuval Keidar of the Yerushalayim District Attorney’s Office. “The plea deal presented… before the court included an agreed penalty of four years’ imprisonment and financial compensation to the families of those killed and injured in the accident.”